Vandals and Romans

Several key factors distinguished the newcomers from their Romano-African neighbours, and hence laid the foundations for a recognizable ‘Vandal’ identity. The first of these was economic. The settlement of ad 442, by which the lands of Africa Proconsularis were divided up amongst Geiseric, his family and his followers, had a crucial practical role in distinguishing the barbarian invaders from their new neighbours.31 The precise mechanics of this distribution are poorly understood, as we have seen, but in purely ideological terms this is not especially important. At the very least, it seems likely that specific estates were granted to the invaders which were rent free, which normally passed on by inheritance. Victor refers to these lands as funicula hereditatis (‘heritable plots’) at the time of the settlement, but by Huneric’s reign they were conventionally referred to as the sortes Vandalorum (or ‘Vandal shares’).32 This terminology was so widespread that the Byzantine occupiers of the 530s referred to the same lands as klBroi Bandilon - a simple Greek translation of the same phrase.33 It was rent from these estates which supported Geiseric’s military followers economically, and the status that these landholdings afforded which justified their pretensions to being a genuine landed aristocracy. The important point to note here is the extent to which the estates helped to ground the emerging identity of the Vandals. When Geiseric made the land settlement of 442, he distributed the lands among his followers; by the time his son came to the throne (if not before) possession of these ‘Vandal shares’ helped to define who was included within this ruling elite. One of the fundamental markers of Vandal identity, in other words, may have been the legal and economic privileges associated with the sortes Vandalorum. Vandals came to be identified as the people who lived on ‘Vandal estates’.

Language provided a further means by which the Vandals could be distinguished.34 Vandalic itself was a dialect of Gothic, and Roman contemporaries may have regarded the two languages as indistinguishable in their coarse incomprehensibility. In an epigram from the Latin Anthology, a poet laments the barbarous sounds of the foreign language:

Amongst the Gothic ‘cheers!’ [eils] and ‘eat and drink!’ [scapia matzia ia

Drincan], No one ventures to write decent poetry.35

Eils and scapia matzia ia drincan are either Gothic or Vandalic, a dialect of the same language group.36 But the image of a Latin writer, adrift in a sea of barbarity, is powerful enough and was a popular one in this period; a similar sentiment may be found in the fifth-century writing of the Gallic bishop Sidonius Apollinaris.37 For these writers, complaints about the barbaric languages of the invaders provided a means to express their own impeccable Romanitas, but need not be read as evidence for an implacable hostility. The anonymous poet of the Latin Anthology understood the barbarian language well enough to incorporate it within his work, and apparently expected his audience to have understood the allusion. Indeed, the incorporation of the Vandals within the gentle mockery of this poetic epigram rather suggests that the different social groups of North Africa were comfortable with one another.

The Vandalic quotation in the Latin Anthology suggests that the language was still used at some level down to the fall of Carthage in ad 534. Vandalic liturgy was probably employed in Arian church services, and this may have helped to keep the language alive.38 Huneric’s insistence in his negotiations with Leo that the Arians of the Balkans be allowed to celebrate in the vernacular certainly implies that this was normal practice in North Africa.39 Famously, the Arian patriarch Cyrila also attempted to debate with the Nicene bishops in Vandalic, although his opponents rejected the gambit on the strength that his Latin was perfectly adequate to be understood.40 It is likely that the majority of Vandals within Africa would have been at home with Latin, but their language provided a strong bond of association.

This is also evident in the naming conventions among the Vandals. Arifridos, as we have seen, sported an unmistakably ‘Vandalic’ name, and many other examples are known from inscriptions and the textual sources. Victor refers to Armogas, Dagila, Gamuth, Heldica, Maioricus, Marivadus, Muritta, Obadus and Vitarit, as well as Cyrila and the familiar names of the Hasding family.41 In each of these cases, distinctively ‘barbarian’ names provided a means by which members of the group could identify themselves, but these were not infallible markers of ethnic identity. The name ‘Maioricus’, for example, is a combination of the familiar Latin prefix ‘Maior’ with the Germanic suffix ‘-rikus’ (‘powerful’).42 The cosmopolitan origins of this name may well reflect Maioricus’ background; Victor tells us that this young Nicene martyr had a mother called Dionysia and an aunt called Dativa, a classical Greek name and a Christian Latin name respectively.43 Strikingly, even Cyrila’s name would seem to be a hybrid of sorts, which combined the Greek ‘Cyril’ with a common Germanic suffix.44 Names, then, were often labels of ethnic identity, but we need to be careful when we attempt to interpret them.45

Vandal identity may also have been facilitated by the sense of a shared history among members of the group, which has always been a common feature of ethnic affiliation. This is rather a controversial issue. Many historians have expressed surprise that the Vandals never produced (or patronized) a historian who celebrated their origins in the manner of

Cassiodorus and Jordanes for the Ostrogoths, Isidore of Seville for the Visigoths or Paul the Deacon for the Lombards.46 It might be concluded from this that such matters were of little importance to the self-identity of the muscle-headed warriors of Carthage. While it is true that no secular narrative history has survived from the kingdom, several allusions in Procopius may imply that some historical traditions did circulate within the group.47 Admittedly, these did not go back very far, and seem to have been tremendously confused: Procopius’ own garbled narrative of the Vandal occupation of Spain is said to have drawn upon these sources. But such imperfect recollections are precisely what we might expect from genuine communal memories. If Procopius did draw upon existing Vandal traditions in writing his account, their existence testifies to the development of a shared sense of heritage among the group by the last days of the Vandal kingdom.